Month: October 2010

As some of you may realize October is almost ending, meaning another crazy round of involvement and activities are coming up in November, a month with 4 weeks only but has more than 5 conferences going on, almost 1-2 per week-end. (‘Chasing Sustainability Conference‘, ‘Beound P!nk Conference’, ‘Canadian Investment Conference‘, ‘International Business Conference‘ and ‘miniEnterprize 2010 Youth Entrepreneurship Conference‘)

… Feeling overwhelming/’suffocating’ eh?… lol

Anyhow, neglecting all these conferences, I can assure you that International Business Conference will definitely be one of the best (because I help in running this conference! and if i have been amazed by how good it is going to be, I’m sure that you will be impressed when you actually come to the Conference! 😉

And I realized I almost spent another paragraph talking about irrelevant topics to this post… Anyhow, speaking of conference, to a certain degree, it is actually hard to market it, especially when the general main target are students who are not that rich and don’t want to spend (at least) 2-3 dinner cost to buy a single conference ticket. (well, with good hotel lunch 😉

1. I guess the 1st challenge would be, how to create value of the conference and make the students realize this value addition to their learning and possiblely career planning.

(will discuss more this coming week…)

2. 2ndly, how to add values to business delegates to actually come to our conference? They are busy and got their own business to care about, and why bother coming over to share their stories with students?

3. 3rdly, what about media? what makes a good story to the media which makes them to come over and give us a media coverage and article report?

One thing that I can tell you right now is that the 1st smart step that we IBC took in terms of ticket sales and conference promotion is that, we collaborated with CUS Sustainability Conference (November 15th, attendee scale around 100 students) on Early Bird ticket price starting on the week of October 18th; 2 weeks before Sus Conf, and a month and more before IBC November 26th. And it went pretty well so far, and I can’t wait for more to come! 😉

Lastly, following my usual routine to end a blog post with a video, let us enjoy the video promo of IBC 2010. I’m very interested in hearing your feedback or any questions about IBC. 😉

See you @ the International Business Conference!

www.ibc2010.ca

Check out the link below!

I just found that even Yahoo! right now are following the hot trend, 3D representation on their online fashion magazine issue! (Wish i have a 3D glasses so i can experience it…)

http://hk.promo.yahoo.com/style/emag/issue12/p04.html

I believe the recent hottest marketing news would be the emblem of GAP. (In my point of view, the new logo doesn’t look nice and fashionable at all. Instead, it reminds me of some anonymous cheap/low-class clothing stores in china. And I wonder how much $ did they spend on designing this logo, and what is the purpose of redesigning it. Will look more into that…) However, today my main focus would be the Sony VAIO computer, which i came aross one from my friend yesterday.

From the photo above, its very obvious that her VAIO’s body and the screen are so thin, and hence it’s very light, feels like a piece of paper when I was holding it. It possesses what an usual computer has: 2 ubc plugs, 1 cable plug, 1 memory card plug and 1 projector/AV plug (hers doesn’t have a CD reader).  Just like a normal computer, but its 10x lighter…

As a student (especially who doesn’t have a cell phone that can access Internet anywhere), I would have to carry my laptop to school, most of the time, to check emails and work on my documents, and take notes. My Toshiba laptop is great, but its just so heavy together with other textbook that i carry to school. Hence, I have been looking into a lighter-weighted computer.

I remembered when Apply first revealed the mac, one of its emphasis was that it is so thin that you can fit it into paper/document envelope. It was indeed a very persuavive selling point.

However,  I would go for the VAIO laptop instead. It is becauase 1. I can always carry it around as its light and 2. it runs on windown system, which is what i have been using for years 3. it comes with what a usual computer has, including usb and memory cards plug.

As being said, I was wondering why Sony didn’t massively advertise these computer series, and I did a bit of dicussion with my friend. In my point of view,  I am pretty sure that if Sony advertised it more, much more students would like to buy it (over than a mac) due to its light weight and window system. My friend then said maybe their target isn’t any general public but on those who are relatively more wealthy and would go for expensive quality products. I agreed on this, and starting to understand more about Sony’s and Apple’s marketing strategies. Will definitely do more research on Sony when i have time…

In the meanwhile, check out the VAIO X Series promo video:

I bet anyone who are studying in Sauder would have heard about this ‘Nestea – The Recruit’ competition at least once  throughout their school years.

During my 1st year, I came across it on facebook after the Team of UBC’s audition results were out. Not until this year, I got invited to its facebook event page and teamed up with 2 of my lovely fellows for the audition just past this friday! (Real hope I can get in since it would be an amazing opportunity to greet and compete with students across Canada and challenge ourselves through using our marketing skills and knowledge, to initiate marketing campaigns for Nestea. 🙂

Speaking of Nestea, I have always been amazed by Coca-cola’s marketing strategies and the team behind it who plans and implements all these unique and ‘long-lasting’ ideas. Examples such as back in the time the video promo ‘I’d like to teach the world to sing…’  , and the ‘Coca-Cola Factory’ etc.

For the Nestea The Recruit, in my point of view, on surface it is a recruitment event that Coca-Cola hosts that aims to extract marketing talents across from Canada’s universities. From another point of view, its simply another marketing campaign, that utilizes students’ interests, competitions across universities, and internships, to promote Nestea through students’ creativity and word of mouth. I mean, in Coca-Cola’s perspective, hiring a team of 3 students (only the 1 winning team across canada will be hired to work for Coca-Cola over the summer) wouldn’t cost a lot, especially if they are only interns; however, the market potential that students can reach into would be far more effective then any formal marketing campaigns, like tv advertisements and booths etc.

On top of that, they hire representatvies (2-3 i think) on each campus to supervise the competition and help in drawing students into the auditions. And i believe there are incentives for reps to create the most appealing auditions in their university since there were a bit of competitions going on the Nestea The Recruit facebook page.

And speaking of facebook, i realized there are no formal website or whatever promotional materials for this Recruit/competition, but rather its solely base on social media, word of mouths and a few posters.

So in conclusion, its very prominent that the cost of hosting this Recruit is extremely low, but in return, through students engagement, internships incentives and competitions across campus, its already enough to market a product into students community, especially it’s the favourable Coca-Cola’s Nestea drink.

Lastly, let us enjoy this video production did by my fellows, last year’s winner, the UBC RePresent team. 😉